City to “see” at last as the eThekwini municipality set aside more than R100m to fix closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras that have left them “blind” to crime and nearly 90% of them not working.
The city said the cameras, which operate on power and fibre, became defective after some of the fibre cables were washed away during last year’s floods.
It said this was a move to ensure the safety of residents and tourists.
Over the past months, the city received a lot of backlash for its defective street cameras, as opposition parties raised concerns that this was affecting police investigations and the tracing of suspects.
After the murders of rapper Kiernan “AKA” Forbes and his friend, chef Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane, who were gunned down outside the Wish restaurant on Florida Road in Durban, it was revealed that only one camera in the area was working.
The contractor is already on the ground, and we anticipate that all our cameras will be up and running by the end of November in time for the festive season.
— Gugu Sisilana, eThekwini municipality spokesperson
The metro’s head of disaster management, Vincent Ngubane, recently presented a detailed plan of action to fix the cameras before the safety and security services committee, where he revealed that the city has budgeted R110m for this project.
The report said repair, maintenance and upgrade of the much-needed CCTV control room will only be concluded by December 14.
With less than 14% of the city’s CCTV cameras operational city-wide, 69 of 499, the city has failed abysmally to prioritise the safety of the residents.
Gugu Sisilana, eThekwini municipality spokesperson, said a letter of award for CCTV cameras was signed on July 14 and part of this contract includes fibre installation, maintenance and repairs.
“The contractor is already on the ground, and we anticipate that all our cameras will be up and running by the end of November in time for the festive season,” said Sisilana.
Sisilana said while repairing the fibre is already under way, the city has also increased the number of visible law enforcement officers deployed to all crime hotspots.
This includes township areas which also have active police stations, she said.
“Police work closely with other law enforcement agencies in ensuring that our residents are safe. We also have beach patrol and law enforcement along popular tourist areas such as our beaches and hotels. We also have rangers at parks who ensure that the safety of our residents and visitors goes beyond just the bustling city centre. This is in addition to our security management officers. We are recruiting more metro police officers to ensure our city is crime-free.
“Criminals are members of our communities and live in our homes. Stolen goods are sold to and bought by our neighbours. Hence, the city encourages communities to work together to end the scourge of crime,” said Sisilana.
Sisilana said there would never be enough security cameras and police if communities continue to hide criminals in their homes and backyards.
eThekwini Cluster CPF chairperson Imtiaz Syed said while fixing the cameras, the city must ensure they uphold the by-law by ensuring all vehicles have their licence registration permanently fixed to their vehicle.
He said this will help also to track vehicle’s movement around the city.
“We need to also stop vehicles and make sure that the number plates are permanently placed, and impound them. We also need more effort to ensure that cameras are installed in the township as many criminals conduct crimes in the CDB and run to the township, where they can no longer be tracked down. We are going to the festive season now, where crime will start to pick up. That is why the sooner these cameras are installed, the better,” said Syed.
Syed said the unavailability of cameras has a negative impact on fighting the escalating number of crimes in eThekwini, especially in the city centre.
The Democratic Alliance said the city officials had no regard for ratepayers, as 95% of the cameras monitoring city hall and their offices are fully functional.
The party said the handover of the CCTV monitoring system from the disaster management unit to the metro police is being dealt with at a snail’s pace.
“Back in January, metro chief commissioner Mchunu made a commitment to ‘reduce crime by 50% in three months’. Nine months later, the eye in the sky has gone blind in the wake of spiralling crime and his words have been proven to be the usual blast of hot air,” said the DA.
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